Martin Krunke and Paul Book, proprietors of a traveling carnival but also the originators of the mysterious spoiler-flip hairstyle popular in the last decade of the 19th century.
They lived like brothers. They slept in the same room. They both had the same dream of each running against the wind in some woods of their own conjuring. After some time they would reach an abandoned cabin. The first thing they do is light a candle and check their appearance in the bathroom mirror. Their hair, usually sculpted into a crisp brim, had flipped up from the running and the wind to for a tiny wall of hair on the top of their forehead. They woke up panting. They finally realized how innovatively handsome they could be.
Everyone that saw it was affected by their new hair. As the carnival reached a new town they supervised as usual but once they were open for business the two friends would wait until the peak crowd would arrive. In their identical European suits they would wander amongst the crowd separately, smiling, two gentlemen-the future. After making the rounds of the grounds they would meet in the central square, nod at each other and say “Nice hair” while beaming.
They never spoke of it but each of them imagined leaving a wake of spoiler flips, as they came to call it, in their path. They imagined a town full of men running to their mirrors and coming up with a way to look as sharp as those two fellows at the fair.
They were right but it wasn’t as conscious as that. Men just tugged their hair higher each day. A photograph of an average man’s profile everyday for two weeks after the Krunke & Book Carnival left would reveal the front end of the hairdo rising slightly like half of a drawbridge.
Another dream ended it. A celebrated strong man, both fists wrapped in the thinnest of gold, below him a young girl drowned in an inch of water. The man stood motionless. They awoke at the same time. “He hates her, she has betrayed him. Murder!” Krunke said.
“He is mesmerized by the fragility of life, despite his love” Book said at exactly the same moment. Shocked they stared at each other in the moonlight through the window of their sleeping cabin.
The mirror shattered, the symmetry they had based their lives on was less than complete and rendered it to them completely invalid. Within minutes they got up and left-one North, one South.
They both died alone, but honestly so (they honestly believed). They never stopped sharing dreams, each morning waking up to a partnerless argument.
-
Follow
Following
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
kingoffrance 